When it comes to penguins, there are a few black and white rules.

See what I did there? Black and white rules.

They enjoy formal wear. They look funny when they walk. If animated movies are to be believed They enjoy tap dancing and surfing And they come from the coldest place on Earth.

But the thing is, the only  black and white rule in nature is that there are no black and white rules. Obviously, penguins don’t  actually enjoy formal wear, Or surfing or tap dancing and funny walking is in the eye of the beholder. Also, penguins aren’t originally  from the coldest place on Earth.

New research has revealed where they originated, and it’s a much warmer place than you’d expect. Turns out, they’re Australian [ INTRO MUSIC If you’re like many people, the Antarctic-dwelling emperor penguin is probably the first penguin that comes to mind whenever you think about these flightless birds. If you’ve never imagined that  the beloved emperor penguin might have Australian roots, you’ve clearly never seen Happy Feet, which featured at least  ten Australian voice actors so, you know, that should  have been your first clue.

But you’ve probably also seen video  of emperor penguins huddled together, weathering Antarctic temperatures  that can reach 40 below. That’s such an iconic image that it’s kind of what we think all  penguins look like, and live like. To the point that many scientists believed  that penguins evolved in Antarctica and spread throughout the  southern hemisphere from there.

Which does make a kind of logical sense. I mean, it’s easy to imagine why creatures subjected to those kinds of daily  temperatures would eventually go, “we’re freezing, let’s get out of here.” But recent research seems to disprove  the penguin’s Antarctic origin story. In 2020, researchers sequenced the  genomes of all living penguin species and found evidence that it  was the other way around: Penguins evolved in moderate temperatures, and from there spread into the colder  habitats we associate them with today.

Or at least, most of them did. There are some that moved to even warmer waters, like the Galapagos penguins. But overall, the evidence supports  that penguins started in the middle and branched out from there. to arrive at this conclusion, researchers first had to sequence the genomes of 22 individual penguins from 18 different species.

The genetic differences between  species helped them determine which were more closely related, and the order in which they  diverged from each other. And when the researchers compared their  penguin family tree to the fossil record, their predictions seemed to line up pretty well. They found that the species that diverged earliest were living in Australia and New Zealand just over 20 million years ago, during the early Miocene.

In that place, at that time, water  temperatures maxed out at around 9° C. That’s similar to today’s  temperatures in sub-Antarctic waters. As a reference point, today, average January sea surface  temperatures in the Falkland Islands, which is home to five different penguin species, are around 9° C.

So in other words, penguins evolved  in sort of mid-range temperatures, at least, compared to average  Antarctic temperatures. The researchers were also able  to follow the genetic changes responsible for cold tolerance and deep diving—adaptations that Antarctic species like the emperor penguin have developed to help them survive in the cold south. These adaptations corresponded with changes to the Antarctic Circumpolar Current or ACC, the ocean current that flows  clockwise around Antarctica.

About 11 million years ago, the ACC became stronger and faster. And because the ACC is super cold, the species that followed it  needed to develop adaptations that helped them tolerate colder waters, use oxygen more efficiently, and access food in deeper parts of the ocean. These adaptations made it possible for species like the emperor penguin to colonize the  otherwise inhospitable Antarctic continent.

A stronger ACC, along with  other north-flowing currents like the Humboldt Current and Benguela Current, also helped slingshot penguins  around the Southern Hemisphere, allowing them to colonize  Africa and South America. So there are penguins that  do indeed love the cold, but there are also penguins who like it hot. And there are some penguins who prefer temperatures somewhere in the middle.

For example, the southern rockhopper penguins, which breed on the Falkland Islands, still prefer those moderate  sea surface temperatures of around 9 degrees celsius. Other penguins, like the northern rockhopper  and the fiordland penguin, like even warmer sea surface temperatures of up to 17 degrees celsius. At one extreme, emperor penguins can tolerate temperatures of 40 below and are perfectly happy swimming in water that’s roughly negative 2 degrees celsius.

And at the other extreme, the Galapagos penguin prefers to swim in toasty 27 degree celsius waters. The ancestors of these heat-loving penguins may have ended up in Galapagos during the last glacial maximum, when sea ice and cold currents drifted north. As temperatures warmed, the penguins just stuck around and adapted to those warmer conditions.

So even though popular culture tends to favor the tall, cold-loving, tap-dancing  penguins of the far south, these birds don’t speak for all penguin kind. In fact, cold-adapted penguins  like the emperor penguin and the king penguin are  actually distant relatives of all other penguins. So while nothing about penguins  is truly black and white … Fun fact: blue penguins are blue and white … The genetic evidence has at least helped remove some of the disagreement about where they evolved and how some of them ended up in the coldest part of the world.

But until there’s similar research  into funny walks and formal wear, we’re at least free to disagree about all those other black and white qualities of the world’s favorite flightless bird. [ OUTRO MUSIC ] What do you mean Warner Brothers isn’t  going to let us use the Happy Feet footage? Have you called the Surf’s Up people instead? Ok, listen we mentioned tap dancing penguins like 6 times in the script We have to show them something Can you get me a penguin costume, I will tap dance No, I’ve never taken tap dance lessons, how hard can it be?